Shipments of smartphones have outpaced feature phones for the first time in history. According to IDC’s latest smartphone sales report, a total of 51.6 percent of all phones shipped in the first quarter were smartphones.

However, the figures should be taken with a grain of salt, as IDC has a habit of classifying every smartphone with an OS as a smartphone, including those that really aren’t seen as proper smartphones by consumer and geeks.

Once again Samsung had a great quarter. It grabbed 32.7 percent of the market, while Apple seized just 17.3 percent. LG also did well, doubling its shipments compared to a year ago and ending up with 4.8 percent of the market. Huawei and ZTE ranked fourth and fifth, with 4.6 and 4.2 percent respectively.

Samsung spent weeks and weeks talking up its Exynos 5 Octa earlier this year, but now it is saying that octa-core chips really don’t matter.

The Galaxy S4 is Samsung’s first device to feature the new quasi-octa-core SoC, but in quite a few markets it will ship with a Qualcomm 600 chip instead. Now Samsung is telling the world that the number of cores doesn’t matter, which is what we’ve been saying all along.

Speaking at the sidelines of an event in New York, head of Samsung’s mobile business J.K. Shin told CNET that the general public won’t really notice the different, or won’t care. Both chips will deliver a similar consumer experience, he said.

However, it is more than a mere sourcing issue. Samsung LSI didn’t have enough time to churn out millions of octa chips needed for the SGS4 launch. Shin also said that the decision to use a Qualcomm chip had nothing to do with LTE compatibility or other factors.